During the final stages of construction on a 100,000 square foot data center facility in North Carolina, a fortune 50 Media and Entertainment company sought to outsource critical facility operations for the first time.

Background

In 2012, a large media and entertainment client determined it needed an expert partner in 24x7 Critical Environment Facility Management Services to ensure uptime and efficiency at its new flagship data center. The client desired an aggressive on-boarding schedule in order to have members of the site facility team on board during the commissioning phases of the new facility’s close-out.

Key Benefits

The BGIS team has helped the client maintain efficiency in Operational Expenditures (OpEx) by increasing the level of self-perform maintenance, improved scopes of work from subcontractors, and closely managed Maintenance and Repair (M&R) spend. In the last fiscal year, our client challenged the team to find an additional $75k in OpEx budget reductions. We were able to meet the client’s budget goals by adjusting our labour planning and isolating opportunities within M&R spend. Additionally, we provided:

Over $134,000 of OpEx and cost avoidance savings from 2014-2016

Operational/controls changes to HVAC systems beginning in the fall of 2016, leading to improved efficiency saving an average of 25,000 kWh monthly

Our Solution

A senior member of our Global Critical Environments Team (GCET) was assigned to serve as Transition Manager to provide leadership for the transition phase. With the help of our dedicated Human Resources team, the GCET was able to recruit and hire the entire 13-person team over a three-month period prior to level 5 commissioning, allowing all individuals a significant amount of crucial hands-on time with the equipment before the site went operational.

As part of the transition, members of the GCET drew on BGIS’s extensive library of critical environments operations procedures (SOPs, MOPs, & EOPs) to develop a client-specific playbook for reliable and efficient ongoing operations of this 24x7 mission critical data center. As with all of our FM programs, BGIS developed a performance management framework based upon the client’s specific needs for the facility and desired business outcomes.

Since transitioning the site to a fully operational data center, our team has supported the client’s growth as they have ramped up their server capacity load at the site. We’ve helped work through challenges of maximizing cooling to match ongoing changes in server utilization. Throughout our relationship, our site teams have consistently scored high against our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and we regularly work with the client to evolve our KPIs to best match the site’s current operational needs.

Key Players

The transition effort was led by subject matter experts from BGIS’s GCET, with executive oversight and guidance from the VP of Data Center Operations.

The ongoing success of the CE FM program is driven by the dedicated Critical Facility Manager and a team of highly qualified Critical Facility Engineers, Leads, and specialists.

Opportunities

BGIS provides best-in-class Critical Environment Facility Management services in any vertical market or geography. Our proven, personalized approach to critical facility operations helps ensure the highest standards of uptime, efficiency, and safety with some of the most critical companies in the world today.